DDA

Obama Uses George Zimmerman’s Logic Overseas

This blog post will not make me more popular. In fact, I anticipate it will make me less so, however, the irony is too glaring not to mention. Also, with all the widespread attention on the Trayvon Martin case, and the George Zimmerman acquittal, we’ve forgotten about the rotten, dangerous policies of our current president, as he ramps up the Draconian, Orwellian policies of his predecessor. It’s time to shift our caring attention back to our fledgling nation.

“The death of Trayvon Martin was a tragedy. Not just for his family, or for any one community, but for America. I know this case has elicited strong passions. And in the wake of the verdict, I know those passions may be running even higher.
“But we are a nation of laws, and a jury has spoken. I now ask every American to respect the call for calm reflection from two parents who lost their young son.

Trayvon was seventeen years old. In low-middle class America, Trayvon looks like he might be guilty of robbery or burglary for two reasons: he’s black, and he’s wearing a hoodie, with the hood up. So he gets murdered by an armed nightwatchmen.

This saddens Obama, as it should. This saddens the nation, as it should.

In Pakistan, a boy of fifteen years or older faces a similar problem. If he happens to be in the surrounding area as a so-called terrorist, he’s guilty. It doesn’t matter if the boy is buying firewood or food from a marketplace nearby his home. It doesn’t matter if he’s walking to the mosque, or if his family happens to live next door to where the so-called terrorist lives. It doesn’t even matter if the so-called terrorist is not even a proven terrorist.

If that young Pakistani boy gets blown up by the Hellfire missiles that whiz across the sky and pummel whatever they strike, that boy’s death is not considered a crime. In fact, his death is not even considered regrettable.

Why? Because:

It in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants, according to several administration officials, unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent. Counterterrorism officials insist this approach is one of simple logic: people in an area of known terrorist activity, or found with a top Qaeda operative, are probably up to no good. (source)

Is that not similar to the logic George Zimmerman used in pursuing, harassing, and subsequently shooting Trayvon Martin in the chest? The Twin Lakes gated community had recently been robbed and burglarized. Zimmerman thought a young man walking through the neighborhood that evening didn’t belong there, and was probably up to no good.

Similar to our current administration’s drone strike policy, we strike the target and find, after everybody is dead, who is the enemy combatant and who isn’t. If everybody dead is of “military-age” and male, then there’s no foul. No crime. No reason to shed tears. And, of course, no justice for the families who lose their husbands, sons, and fathers to these attacks.

Essentially, the government finds in the wreckage, if they care to ask the Pakistani police what they found, the bag of Skittles and the bottle of iced tea. But innocence doesn’t matter in these cases. What matters is the assumption that all young men in the surrounding drone attack were guilty, because what else is a young man in Pakistan anyway, but guilty?

And yet, and yet, Zimmerman gets his 9mm gun returned to him, and President Obama gets to keep his drone program intact and fully functioning, with zero consequences.

You’re comparing that pig Zimmerman with Barack Obama? you might shout at me.

Well, no, I’m comparing their respective logical approach to killing people, but truly there isn’t any comparison. Zimmerman killed one innocent teenager. The number of people killed in President Obama’s drone strikes have been, by statistical estimates, innocent 98 percent of the time.

In Pakistan alone, 2538 people have been killed by the administration’s drone strikes. What is 98 percent of 2538? There is a lot of damage being done to people all across the world, and how we might feel about George Zimmerman blasting a kid with a bag of Skittles, they might feel toward us.

Except those families will never get a trial, and the commander-in-chief who orchestrated the killing received a Nobel Peace Prize.